epic trip, day 2: castle post

way late again. i'll just stop mentioning how late i am to post, because...that is the way things go. i swear it feels like this trip happened 2 months ago. now it's suddenly raining and raining and summer feels so far away.
i'll just give a whole post to the hunedoara castle mainly because there's a lot of pictures and they all belong together. there's no major story connected to only the castle re: our trip, except the UNAVOIDABLE game-of-thrones mindset. because look, castle! seriously. it's as if i'd never seen a real castle before.
actually, nope, i might have SEEN  a few, but haven't visited too many castles in my life. i think maybe one in hungary...which was a mock castle actually, hah.
this one's as real as it gets for someone like me. also, 6 centuries old.

bridge and towers and crenellations, oh, my.

sooo, the interior yard. unfortunately not all the spaces were accessible, but in the space of 1 1/2 hours we had lots of places to roam around.

ok, no. first door pictures.

the bleak back buildings.

ta-dah! big hall with lots of arches and very little light.

banners! so much more exciting for me than it would've been 2 months ago! didn't do close ups, but some/most of them are ravens - the sigil of House Hunyad  (Corvinus), the lords of the realm or whatever

more ravens, I think

great windows onto a great view

there was a mini-exhibition there - the works are all made out of small cobble-like stones/tiles.

favourite!

'the arya window' - instantly named after arya stark of GOT/ 'a song of ice and fire', with giulia's explanation : "they put it there on purpose for you to love it, which doesn't make it less lovable."

there's a well here, 30 meters deep, and it has a story. it's been dug, apparently, by 3 turkish prisoners, who were promised they would be released if they strike water, and then denied.

they even have gargoyles. i mean, what are those things, harpies? and a statue at the very top, because...actually, i don't know why that is. 

"the drummers' tower". i love how somebody thought of making hay in the castle's backyard.

harpies close up

gate tower seen from next to the other towers, because there are oh so may towers. 

now we're talking!

according to giulia, this is a "cersei window". hmmm - still trying to see it. 

oh-la-la, doors and bannisters. 

i went through that door very very determinedly, and found myself in a wing i'd already seen. oh well. 

sonia dealing with portals/waiting for giulia to finish photographing all the doorknobs in the castle.

yeah!

classic postcard material. i bet this view is on every site and ad for this castle, but so what.

the wall. 

these are all my brilliant insights regarding this part of the trip. due to...fragmentation (let's agree to call it by this polite term), i still have one more post at least to do til i process the whole thing and am done with it and can hopefully move on to processing other stuff.
man, is summer over! so over.
c